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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a far bigger and broader audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house movement – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way completely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the tune of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often occur during the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising effect on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and more distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an affable, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything more than a long series of extremely lucrative concerts – two new singles released by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate influence was a kind of groove-based shift: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”